Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine

A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers

Anthony Slide

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2014
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781628469172
• Subtopic: Publishing
• Index: Social Sciences

The fan magazine has often been viewed simply as a publicity tool, a fluffy exercise in self-promotion by the film industry. But as an arbiter of good and bad taste, as a source of knowledge, and as a gateway to the fabled land of Hollywood and its stars, the American fan magazine represents a fascinating and indispensable chapter in journalism and popular culture.

Anthony Slide's Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine provides the definitive history of this artifact. It charts the development of the fan magazine from the golden years when Motion Picture Story Magazine and Photoplay first appeared in 1911 to its decline into provocative headlines and titillation in the 1960s and afterward. Slide discusses how the fan magazines dealt with gossip and innuendo, and how they handled nationwide issues such as Hollywood scandals of the 1920s, World War II, the blacklist, and the death of President Kennedy. Fan magazines thrived in the twentieth century, and they presented the history of an industry in a unique, sometimes accurate, and always entertaining style.

This major cultural history includes a new interview with 1970s media personality Rona Barrett, as well as original commentary from a dozen editors and writers. Also included is a chapter on contributions to the fan magazines from well-known writers such as Theodore Dreiser and e. e. cummings. The book is enhanced by an appendix documenting some 268 American fan magazines and includes detailed publication histories.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The Birth of the Fan Magazine
• Chapter 2. The Pioneering Writers
• Chapter 3. James R. Quirk and Photoplay
• Chapter 4. The Studio Mouthpiece
• Chapter 5. The Fan Magazine as a Literary Outlet
• Chapter 6. New Writers, New Publishers, New Horizons
• Chapter 7. The Golden Age of the Fan Magazine
• Chapter 8. Gossip, Scandal, and Innuendo
• Chapter 9. The 1950s and the Influence of Television
• Chapter 10. The 1960s
• Chapter 11. Ms. Rona
• Chapter 12. The People Generation
• Chapter 13. The End of the Line and a New Beginning
• Appendix 1. U.S. Fan Magazines
• Appendix 2. Selected U.K. Fan Magazines
• Appendix 3. Fan Club Journals
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index